In part 3 of this 3-part series, Drug Topics® sat down with Asteres® chairman and BioIQ CEO, Sean Slovenski to discuss 24/7 automated pharmacy pickup and the benefits for pharmacists and patients alike.
Drug Topics®: That’s awesome, that seems like something that will definitely become even more popular moving forward—[especially] with…social distancing and everything like that.
Can you tell me a little bit about what resources are available to ensure the success of a script center in a pharmacy?
Sean Solvenski: Yeah, we have an entire training program and a support program that we put into place, so more than just “Here are your brochures and operating procedures.” We have an entire team that works with the pharmacy staff and the store staff to understand the machines, to understand how the service works, [and] to set up the routines that are right for that particular location.
Each lead pharmacist will have a main contact within our organization to help educate them [and] to help be a support person to them. We run monthly reports to see how it's going, [and see] what's working, what's not, and to suggest new or different ways of doing things because even in one community to the next, there are subtle differences. And so you're always tweaking, it’s not cookie cutter. A lot of personal time and attention has to go into the first 6 to 9 months to make sure that things get launched successfully for many years.
Drug Topics®: That sounds like a lot of great ongoing support for the pharmacies. Can you tell me any key takeaways or anything overall that you would like our audience to know?
Solvenski: One, just to know these things exist. Telemedicine was around for 30 years before anyone really knew if it could do anything. Many of the companies in the space, like ours, have been around for 15 or 20 years; they've been serving institutional groups like prisons, the Department of Defense, and [other] people like that. But now, it's starting to come out into the mainstream and into retail. Just knowing that this option exists—an automatic teller machine but for medicines—if that's one thing they remember out of listening to this is “Hey, I gotta go check that out. I didn't even know about it”… That would be lovely. Everything else will come after that. Yeah, it helps save some money. Yes, it generates new revenue and extends your hours. But if you don't know about it, you can't figure those things out. So just knowing about it is important.
Drug Topics®: Thank you so much for joining me today and talking about this topic. It's really important and I'm excited for people to hear about this.
Solvenski: Thank you. I appreciate it.